The coronavirus pandemic is causing lifespan losses not seen since World War II in Western Europe and surpassing those observed around the break-up of the Eastern bloc in Central and Eastern European countries, according to scientific research led by scientists at Oxford University who compiled an unprecedented data set on deaths from 29 countries, covering most of Europe, the United States and Chile, the countries where official death records for 2020 have been published.
According to a report by the site time now news They found that 27 out of 29 countries experienced a reduction in life expectancy in 2020, and on a scale that spent years progressing in mortality, according to the paper published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
Corona
Women in 15 countries and men in 10 countries were found to have a lower average expectancy at birth in 2020 compared to 2015, the year when life expectancy was already negatively impacted by a major flu season.
Dr José Manuel of the Leverholm Center for Demographic Sciences in Oxford said: “For Western European countries such as Spain, England, Wales, Italy, Belgium and others, the last time such a significant reduction in life expectancy at birth was observed in one year was during World War II.
Moreover, the magnitude of life expectancy losses was stark in most of the countries studied. The 22 countries included in our study suffered losses greater than half a year in 2020. Females in eight countries and males in 11 countries experienced losses in excess of one year. “.
Oporto explained that it took an average of 5.6 years for these countries to achieve a one-year increase in life expectancy recently, a progression that was wiped out over the course of 2020 by the coronavirus.
In most of the 29 countries, males experienced a greater decline in life expectancy than females. The largest reduction in life expectancy was observed among males in the United States, who experienced a decrease of 2.2 years compared to 2019 levels, followed by Lithuanian males (1.7 years).
The researchers added, “The significant reduction in life expectancy observed in the United States may be partly explained by the observed increase in the mortality rate of working age observed in 2020. Significantly reduced life expectancy.